


In Other Circumstances

by MagicalDragon



Series: Queer Headcanon Fics [9]
Category: Joyeux Noël | Merry Christmas (2005)
Genre: Antisemitism, Historical References, M/M, Nazi Germany, Queer Themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-19
Updated: 2020-02-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:53:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22805854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagicalDragon/pseuds/MagicalDragon
Summary: “You were right, back on the front,” Audebert said. “We could have…”“We can,” Horstmayer said.
Relationships: Lt Audebert/Lt Horstmayer (Joyeux Noël)
Series: Queer Headcanon Fics [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1209288
Comments: 11
Kudos: 13





	In Other Circumstances

**1914**

As soon as their conversation turned from business to pleasure, Horstmayer got an inkling of what sort of man Lieutenant Audebert was. He wasn’t sure where it came from, exactly, indeed he very rarely was with these things — but he was also rarely wrong. Even as the man mourned for the loss of his wife’s picture, there was something indescribable to how he looked at Horstmayer, after he returned it to him. And, well… Horstmayer was used to speaking this language. He had clad himself tightly in the cloth of the senior lieutenant the last few years, particularly since the war broke out, but it was not a language easily forgotten. Besides, when he wrote to Gabriel… There were ways to do that without anyone catching on. 

Audebert reminded him of Gabriel. Reminded him of him so terribly that it shocked him to his very core, and he often wondered what he would have done differently, if his heart hadn’t broken the moment they first conversed in French and he saw before him Gabriel losing his mind in the trenches. 

Gabriel was forbidden — saved — from the front by his nationality, but here stood another Gabriel, forced into it, but as unable to reconcile it with what he wanted his life to be. 

They shared an close embrace, in a quiet moment, and it didn’t have to mean what Horstmayer thought it did. They were not on familiar terms, Horstmayer did not even know Audebert’s given name, the embrace was certainly more than it should be under the circumstances, if it weren’t what Horstmayer thought it to be, but well.. Men did strange things, in war. 

Once it was all over, on their way towards the East Front where Horstmayer would almost lose his life, he planned a trip to Paris in his mind. Maybe he would retire from the military after the war, too. Get a job as a clerk, like Gabriel wanted him to. They had been at peace, when he signed on. Things had been different then. 

**1921**

Despite having had every intention of taking that trip to Paris to visit Audebert, between the war and the November Revolution, Horstmayer didn’t get the chance to go till years later. Gabriel had gotten involved with the socialists in his absence. The increasingly bleak letters Horstmayer had been sending him from the East Front probably only made him a more stringent opponent of the war. It had always been awful for him, of course; ripped apart by his motherland and the home of his choosing. 

But they did go, eventually. Gabriel wanted to visit his family, as well, as soon as the Revolution was over and the dust was settled. So they went, and they found the Audeberts’ home. And Lieutenant Audebert… looked much better than he had on the West Front. Happier. The haunted look that had followed him everywhere they went for those two days they knew each other was… not gone, but hidden, the way Horstmayer had always been able to hide it. 

“This is my brother-in-law, Gabriel Caron,” he told Audebert and his wife. 

On the front, Gabriel had been Horstmayer’s wife, but in Paris, he was his brother-in-law. Life was strange like that. 

After they’d finished exchanging pleasantries, Audebert’s wife said: 

“Oh, but monsieur, you should have brought your wife!”

Horstmayer had talked their options over with Gabriel, before they came. He could claim his wife was indisposed, but that might force him into elaborate lies, and if they saw each other once more at a later date, those lies would have to be repeated. He could claim his wife had died, exempting them from any future explanations, but they might be subject to much misplaced sympathy. In the end, they went with the latter.

“I’m afraid my wife died 4 years ago, madam,” he told her and she apologised profusely, the way he had feared she would. 

Audebert eyed them curiously, but said nothing till the two of them were alone, his wife with their children and Gabriel with his family. They were playing chess and drinking sherry. 

“I’m glad you managed to find us,” Audebert told him. “I had given up hope that you would show up one day.”

Horstmayer smiled down at the board. 

“It was a bit silly of me, just showing up. You could have moved elsewhere. Or -- forgive me -- died in the war, like so many others.”

Audebert regarded him for a long moment. 

“I’m glad you did, though. And that you didn’t die. I was beginning to think you had.”

Horstmayer moved a pawn with a rueful smile. 

“I almost did, on the East Front. Took a bullet, right here.” He patted his left shoulder. “That was near the end, of course. I still got almost the full four years of that war. Then I come home to a revolution.”

Horstmayer shook his head, his eyes still on the board. 

“And a dead wife,” Audebert said and Horstmayer looked up at him. “4 years, you said. That must have been before the end of the war.”

“Right, of course,” Horstmayer said and coughed awkwardly, trying to play it off as a griefed widower who wanted to avoid a painful subject. 

“Unless…” Audebert reached out towards a chess piece, but instead his hand covered Horstmayer’s. “Unless there never was a wife.”

Horstmayer’s heart was hammering in his chest. He was almost certain he was in no danger, here — he had been quite certain in his reading of Audebert, all those years ago, and he seemed to have just confirmed it. Yet… it was always frightening, the first time. Not that that was the only reason for his hearts sudden overwork, however. 

Horstmayer looked up at Audebert. 

“Unless there wasn’t,” he confirmed

Audebert’s hand squeezed his. 

“You were right, back on the front,” Audebert said. “We could have…”

“We can,” Horstmayer said. 

“Monsieur Caron?”

“Will not mind.”

Ever since Horstmayer had signed up, all those years ago — and even before it, too, though to a lesser extent — they had gone with whomever they wanted to. It had to be that way, with Horstmayer gone and Gabriel back home. They were not actually married, there was no reason for it to be otherwise. It was not uncommon, among men like them, to have family yet others, too. 

Audebert could not hide some shock at that revelation, but when he reached out towards Horstmayer to grasp his cheek and in the process spread chess pieces all over the floor, that shock was quickly forgotten. 

**1930**

Audebert first made it to Berlin after Horstmayer and Gabriel have visited with him and his wife in Paris on six different occasions. To be fair, they always had gone to Paris, he and Gabriel, while Audebert had never been to Berlin before. He left his wife and their children, behind — Henri was 16, now, and had begged to come along, but while Audebert had eventually confided in his wife about he and Horstmayer, their children were another matter entirely. 

They took him to bar after bar, introducing him to the world of the Berlin homosexual. Gabriel gave him a Hirschfeld publication, before deciding to leave them to their own devices. They ended up in bed, finally in a time and place where they could manage something more than rushed fumbling under each other’s clothes. Horstmayer took his mouth to Audebert’s cock and saw him fall apart. 

“I still think about that night, you know,” Horstmayer told Audebert afterwards, when they were half naked and smoking in bed. “That night Anna Sørensen sang for us. Every time someone thanks me for my service, I thank her for what she did for us that night. I never liked Christmas much, it just reminded me where I wasn’t welcome, but at least now… well, it reminds me of that, instead. What we had, all of us, that night.”

Audebert turned to look at him. 

“My father wants me to regret it, but I never will,” he confided. 

“Damn your father,” Horstmayer said. 

Audebert laughed. 

“I don’t regret it either. Even if it did get me a demotion and that damned wound at the East Front. The Great War was… well, I hope it really was the war to end all wars. Though given recent events that doesn’t seem likely.”

The recent election had been… unfortunate, for anyone the National Socialists didn’t like. 

Audebert looked at him with concern. 

“How are things?” 

Horstmayer sighed and got up so he could put out his cigarette stub. 

“Bad,” he said. “But I’ll manage.” 

**1936**

Horstmayer left Germany for good after a series of laws were enacted that, among other things, made it difficult for his brother-in-law — his actual brother-in-law, not Gabriel, who was neither a doctor nor a Jew — to keep practicing medicine in Leipzig. For this reason, his sister was the first to leave, as her husband moved her and their children to Palestine. His younger brother didn’t take it too seriously, and his parents hated the idea of leaving their home. Horstmayer did too, but at least he had somewhere to go that was already familiar to him, even if he must leave his family behind for it. 

“I wish they would leave too,” he told Gabriel on their way to France. “I wouldn’t see them if they went to Palestine, either, but at least…”

Gabriel took his hand.

“I know, my love.” 

Gabriel died of tuberculosis a year later. 

**1940**

Horstmayer only got a few years in France before the German troops were at the border. How odd, to have once been those troops, but now be fleeing them. 

On the day the Marginot Line was breached, Audebert stormed into Horstmayer’s apartment, looking wild. 

“You have to leave,” he told Horstmayer, before he had the time to ask. “The Germans made it through the Ardennes last night.” 

“How…?” Horstmayer began to ask, falling back on his military traning to try to make sense of what the world had become. 

“Does it matter?” Audebert interrupted. “With the Marginot Line broken, who knows what will happen? They could be in Paris by spring.” 

“Surely, the French Army—” Horstmayer found himself arguing. 

“Are you willing to take that risk? Because I’m not.” 

“I can’t keep fleeing every time they attack a country. We never made it as far as Paris in the Great War, why would this one be different?” 

Audebert looked at him with obvious anguish in his face. 

“Please,” he intoned and moved forward to take Horstmayer’s hand in both of his. “Please, we can get you on a ship to America within a fortnight...” 

“And what would I do in America?” Horstmayer said, vaguely aware he was being difficult. 

“Be free, live,” Audebert said. “You know what they’re—”

“Don’t lecture me on that!” Horstmayer snapped and pulled his hand away from Audebert.

His brother had left for America, last year, but he had no idea if his parents were still in Germany. Or his cousins. Or uncles, aunts… 

“I’ll go with you,” Audebert insisted. “If you go, I’ll go with you.”

“Don’t be silly,” he said. “You have your wife and children to think about.”

“My children are adults now,” he said. “They can—”

“I refuse to take you away from your children. Or your wife.”

Audebert just looked at him, heartbroken. He was crying a bit. Horstmayer was inexplicably reminded of when Ponchel had died — he hadn’t known his name then, of course, but Audebert had talked of him often, since. 

And, well, that look… 

“Fine,” Horstmayer said, feeling anything but. “Fine, I’ll go to America. Maybe I can find my brother. Maybe I can…”

Audebert moved in to kiss him, and it was long and emotional and wet from his tears. 

“I love you,” he said when they parted.

“I don’t want to leave you,” Horstmayer admitted against his lips. The _again_ went unspoken.

“I know.”


End file.
